Sorry for the delay in writing a story about this, but here we finally are: Nokia's MeeGo (or Maemo or whatever it's called this hour) is getting its successor. Yes, MeeGo, the short-lived but beloved platform running on the unicorn phone, the Nokia N9, will continue onwards in a slightly different form. Its new home? Jolla - a company formed by former Nokia chief operating officer Marc Dillon, who was the principal engineer for MeeGo/Maemo at Nokia since 2006.

It uses federated and standard XMPP and works with any XMPP complaint client. Allows you to communicate with any user from other federated XMPP servers. Bingo, that's what's expected from decent IM service.

WhatsApp uses XMPP

Doesn't use standard XMPP, doesn't work with any XMPP complaint client, not federated. Doesn't allow you to communicate with anyone except for users from Whatsapp. Who cares what they use inside, if their external communication is not compatible with anything. The result is a walled garden and proprietary network.

Still what prevented them from using regular XMPP with federation? I see no technical reasons, only political. Normal IM services using federated protocol promote open communication. Walled gardens promote only themselves. Yes, Whatsapp protocol was reconstructed for N9, but if instead it was using regular XMPP, one could just use any client out there without efforts to unscramble custom changes. And the lack of federation defeats the purpose. Non federated XMPP while being XMPP is a wall. Facebook for example is not federated, even though it uses standard protocol.